


drive until it all breaks down

by bellawritess



Category: All Time Low (Band)
Genre: DMC genre, Discussion of the Afterlife, Driving, Friendship/Love, Late Night Conversations, M/M, References to Suicide, i guess, nice club channel reference lmao, reflective, say it with me kids: suspension of disbelief is key, this fic isn't sad though is the thing it's just, uhhh i have no idea what genre this is, unrealistic representation of the traffic on 695, you know that genre that's between angst and fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellawritess/pseuds/bellawritess
Summary: Alex isn’t sure where he’s taking them. He’s not sure where they are, even, but he doesn’t want a GPS, doesn’t want a phone on, doesn’t want lights in the car to illuminate his face, to blind him from seeing Jack hidden in the shadows of the passenger seat.Finally, as they’re passing their third exit, Jack says, “What do you think happens when you die?”
Relationships: Jack Barakat/Alex Gaskarth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	drive until it all breaks down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waytoofadedtodrive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waytoofadedtodrive/gifts).



> okay so yesterday i had the following exchange with [alex](http://waytoofadedtodrive.tumblr.com/)
> 
> me: i want to write jalex but idk what to write  
> alex: talking about the afterlife while driving down the highway at night  
> me: that's actually a really good idea
> 
> and then i sat down and wrote this. so alex, this is for you, thank you for your words and brilliance and also? just for being a wonderful friend and making me feel happy and !!! ok enough enough enough i just love you
> 
> i looped edge of tonight while writing this so i'm honestly surprised it's not MORE emo but also glad because i'm trying to not write a lot of emo things so this is a nice middle ground. that said: it is still a little emo so approach w caution
> 
> tw for: mentions of and references to and conversations about suicide. also just conversations about death/dying, although not in detail
> 
> title is from the edge of tonight by all time low, which i apparently listened to 21 times while writing this. so. now you know that

“Let’s go for a drive,” Alex says, holding up his keys, half-expecting that Jack will say no.

But Jack just says, “Okay.”

The highway is almost empty. It’s what Alex had hoped, at half past midnight. The quiet is infinite, and for a long time neither of them says anything, not because there’s nothing to say but because the longer they go in the silence, the more it means to break it.

Alex isn’t sure where he’s taking them. He’s not sure where they are, even, but he doesn’t want a GPS, doesn’t want a phone on, doesn’t want lights in the car to illuminate his face, to blind him from seeing Jack hidden in the shadows of the passenger seat.

Finally, as they’re passing their third exit, Jack says, “What do you think happens when you die?”

And fuck if that’s not the only thing he could have possibly broken the silence with to make the ensuing quiet even heavier.

Alex chews his lip and veers left into the next lane over. He waits for Jack to tell him off for not using his blinker, and then feels badly for not using it anyway and resolves not to do that again. Jack doesn’t say anything. Alex wonders how much he’s paying attention.

“I don’t know,” he finally says. The short version. “What do you mean? Like, do I believe in the afterlife?”

Jack shrugs. “I guess.”

“Do you?”

“No, you’re not pulling this with me. I asked you first.”

Alex almost laughs; of course Jack would call him on his deflective bullshit. “Uh. Okay. I don’t believe in heaven and hell, but I think…” Out of the darkness, another car pulls onto the highway. “I just really want there to be something. I don’t know what, but I try to be optimistic.”

“So you don’t think that after you die that’s it?” Jack sounds surprised. “Really?”

“That’s not what I said,” Alex says tiredly. “What I think and what I try to believe aren’t the same.”

“I asked what you think.”

Alex sighs heavily. “I don’t think anything happens. I _think_ that you just die and then you’re dead. And then eventually you decompose and your atoms go back into the universe and one day you become a supernova if you’re lucky.”

“I’d be into that,” Jack muses. “I would love to be a supernova.”

 _You already are,_ Alex thinks, because there’s no debating that Jack is a fucking supernova, explosive and beautiful and once-in-a-lifetime. His presence is felt long after he’s left, and his light lingers everywhere he goes. It burns sometimes, to be around him, to love him, but Alex would rather burn than feel nothing, and if he’s going to go down, he’d rather go down in the instability of adoring Jack.

“What do you think?” Alex presses, determined to draw this out of Jack. He wonders how it’s possible that they’ve never had a conversation like this. How it’s possible that after more than fifteen years they still manage to find new things to discuss. Alex is always desperate to hear more about the inner machinations of Jack’s mind, and he’s long since shaken the fear that he’ll find something he won’t abide. Jack is paradoxically as reliable as anything and anyone in Alex’s life while also a question Alex is constantly seeking answers to.

Jack hums thoughtfully. “Yeah. Same as you. I don’t think there’s anything. I want to, you know? I think I did for a while. When I was a kid, especially. I totally believed in heaven and hell and all that bullshit. And then after that I kind of thought maybe ghosts were real. But now…maybe it’s one of those shitty byproducts of being an adult, but no, I don’t believe in anything.”

“Yeah,” Alex says quietly, and he turns on cruise control. He clears his throat. “Why do you ask?”

“Just thinking,” Jack says, which always takes Alex a little bit by surprise. “I like hearing your thoughts on big questions.”

“I like hearing yours.”

Jack hums and doesn’t say anything. A lone set of headlights races past on the other side of the highway, briefly illuminating a flash of trees before the world falls into darkness again. Unless Alex exits somewhere to turn around, they’ll be on 695 for just under an hour, but to brake now would feel too jarring. There’s something hypnotic about the smooth 70 they’re cruising, the road they’re swallowing up as they cover mile after mile. 

Or maybe Alex doesn’t want to leave this moment just yet. He could take Jack for any number of drives — he could ask every day and he doubts Jack would ever refuse — but there’s something inimitable about the quiet they’re in right now. It’s big, too big for the car; it presses in from all sides, forces Alex to say something, anything to dispel it, to make a dent in it.

“Afterlife theories scare me a little,” he admits.

Jack looks over. “What? Why?”

Alex swallows and glances at his side mirror just for somewhere else to look. He’s worried that the continuity of the drive is actually hypnotizing him, but on the other hand, it’s not like he has anything to hide. Jack knows all the worst of him.

“It just feels like a safety net,” he says quietly. “And if you were the kind of person in a bad place in life, but you thought you’d feel better in the _afterlife,_ dead…if that was something you really believed you could fall back on, why wouldn’t you — you know?”

“Oh,” Jack breathes. “I never thought about it that way.”

“I think I’m a little too close to it, though,” Alex says, forcing a small laugh. “But, uh, yeah. I just — I don’t like the idea that people are out there believing their lives are less valuable because they won’t end after they die.” He shrugs. When he moves his hand off the wheel to reset the cruise control, his fingers feel achy, and he realizes he’s been gripping the steering wheel far too tight. “Most people who believe in afterlife stuff, that I know of anyway, aren’t thinking like that, but I always wonder if — I just wonder about people who take their own lives, religious people especially, if maybe they’d have held tighter to their actual lives if they didn’t think that there would be some light at the end of the tunnel after.”

Exhaling, he clicks his blinker on and changes lanes. There’s no reason to switch lanes, but he needs to do something. Needs to fill the oppressive silence with the click of his turn signal while he waits for Jack to — to call him crazy, or agree with him, or change the subject, or whatever. 

“Okay,” Jack says. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve never thought about it like that, but…yeah.”

There’s a pause, and Alex knows Jack is gearing up for a worse question. He can feel this silence, the waiting kind, while Jack gathers up the right words, and sure enough:

“If you had believed in the afterlife, do you think you would have…? Back when that was — where your head was at, I mean. Sorry if —”

“It’s fine,” Alex says quickly. He sighs. “I don’t know, you know? I really don’t. Sometimes I — I mean, honestly sometimes I think about it and I wonder why the fuck I didn’t do it then. I’m glad,” he rushes to explain, “because I don’t — I like being alive, ha, you know, but like, I remember how it felt, and I…just can’t really believe I had the strength to not do it. And I guess maybe, if I thought there would be _anything_ better than being alive, yeah, I might have done it. But I didn’t, and I didn’t, and…now I’m still here.”

“Thank God,” Jack murmurs. His hand lands on Alex’s thigh, and Alex sucks in a breath and nods.

“Thank God,” he agrees, and presses his hand over Jack’s, curling his fingers into Jack’s palm and holding tight. “To be perfectly clear, that was then. I’m not —”

“I know. I asked.”

“Yeah.”

The sky is dark, and Alex wishes there was something to see up there other than a disappointing blackness. When he glances to the right, Jack is smiling a little bit, inexplicably, even though they’ve just been talking about Alex almost killing himself, and Alex feels warm, almost hot, and there’s a stirring in his chest and he’s dying to know what Jack is thinking about that’s making him smile, but he doesn’t want Jack to stop, and for a moment the question paralyzes him and he has to look back at the road to make sure they don’t crash.

“What are you smiling about?” he asks, at last, overcome by curiosity, a teasing slant to his voice so Jack doesn’t think he’s offended.

Jack’s smile somehow gets bigger. “Just lucky,” he says, soft over the thrum of wheels beating against the highway. “I’m just really lucky. That I have you.”

“Me?”

“Who the fuck else, Alex?” Jack breathes a laugh. “Yeah. You. I love that you just — kidnap me to go for a drive around 695 at almost one in the morning. And that you trust me enough to tell me why you didn’t fucking kill yourself when you were eighteen. Or that you humor me. I don’t know. I just love you.”

Alex’s heart trips into an extra beat, and his grip on Jack’s hand tightens. “Yeah. I love you too.”

The minutes melt into the pavement, and Alex doesn’t let go of Jack’s hand until they’re on the exit ramp.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm gonna be honest, i also don't REALLY know what you just read, but if you did read it then i am grateful so thank you <3 hope everyone is doing well love you all lots you can come chat on tumblr [@clumsyclifford](http://clumsyclifford.tumblr.com/) if you like!!!! xoxo bye


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